


The Apricot Tree

by Minutia_R



Category: The Queen's Thief - Megan Whalen Turner
Genre: Family, Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-31
Updated: 2017-07-31
Packaged: 2018-12-09 08:30:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11665407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Minutia_R/pseuds/Minutia_R
Summary: One perfect moment, before everything started happening.





	The Apricot Tree

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Transposable_Element](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Transposable_Element/gifts).



An apricot blossom had fallen on the page, and Sophos brushed it off, rereading in panic and desperate hope that somehow the words that the blossom had obscured changed the entire meaning of the letter.

They didn’t. “I have to go to Sounis,” he said.

Eurydice poked him in the side with her spindle, which she’d been idly tossing from hand to hand rather than actually spinning with. “Feather-wit. How can you go to Sounis? We’re in Sounis.”

“Feather-wit yourself,” said Ina, leaning down from her perch on an overhead branch to make a grab for Sophos’ letter. He held it out of her reach. “Obviously he means Sounis-the-City. Or else Our-Uncle-Who-Is-Sounis.”

“Both.” Sophos buried his head in his arms, a dramatic gesture which had the added benefit of shielding his letter with his body against Ina’s continued attempts to either snatch it or read it over his shoulder. “I’m being summoned to the king’s court to apprentice with his Magus. Good gods, I thought he and Father had both given up on me years ago! He’s going to marry the queen of Eddis!”

“Well, she said no, didn’t she?” said Ina.

“How can she say no?” Eurydice objected, trying to poke Ina with the spindle. Her reach wasn’t long enough, which might have accounted for Ina’s choice of seat. Or else it was just that in the tree, it took that much longer for her own spindle to fall to the ground, and that much more thread was spun each time, so her work got done with less effort on her part--as long as Sophos was willing to keep tossing the spindle back up to her. Her wool was collecting dirt and the occasional twig, but she didn’t seem to mind. She let it drop again while Eurydice stood on her toes, poking, and said, “Doesn’t her father--”

“Her father’s dead, or else wouldn’t he be Eddis?” said Ina. “They say her uncle runs the country--he’s her minister of war. He probably doesn’t want our uncle coming in and ruining a good thing for him. They say she’s got a body like a grain sack and a face like a granite wall and a crooked nose besides, which is what’s put off all her suitors so far.” With every word, she leaned farther out on the branch, forcing Sophos to hold the letter farther out of her reach, until her upside-down face, with its nasty grin and the pins coming out of her hair, was nearly touching Sophos’ own. “Hey, Sophos--maybe you can marry her.”

“Maybe you can marry a … a pig,” said Sophos. “How do you know all that?”

“Unlike some people, I’m interested in finding things out … now!”

Before Sophos could figure out what she meant by that, Eurydice snatched the letter out of his hand and tossed it up to Ina, who caught it, letting her wool fall onto the ground.

“Read it, read it!” Eurydice chanted.

“What do you think I’m doing?” said Ina.

“Out loud! It’s only fair, I got it for you!”

“True. All right , you can have it next.”

“You know I can’t read!”

“Learn.”

With a howl of outrage, Eurydice hurled her spindle at Ina. It struck her on the side of the head, but without much force, and Ina barely flinched, her eyes firmly on the letter. Eurydice started swarming up the tree, still shrieking. Sophos sighed, stood up, and with some effort pried her loose of the trunk. His mother wouldn't blame him for spending his afternoon with the girls--he really had nothing better to do, since his father had only stayed long enough on his latest visit to the villa to toss out Sophos’ tutors before going away again. Sophos had been glumly expecting a new, more disagreeable tutor to show up any day, but the letter that had arrived instead was even less welcome. Either way, if Ina and Eurydice came back to the house with puffy noses and split lips, he would be blamed.

“All right, vixen, settle down and I’ll read it to both of you,” he said, as Eurydice thrashed and kicked in his arms. “Give it back, Ina, come on.”

With a sweet look as if she’d meant to do it all along, Ina let the letter fall. Sophos picked it up and sat back against the tree, Eurydice nestled against his side, Ina swinging her legs back and forth above. Not for the first time, Sophos thought what a pity it was that his parents had only one son. If clever Ina or fierce Eurydice had been born a boy, his uncle would never have had to court Eddis. And now that had fallen through, and it seemed like he was going to try to make do with Sophos once again.

Sometimes happiness comes like a sword-thrust, sudden and sharp. And, just like that, Sophos knew that there was nowhere else he would rather be but there, under the apricot tree with his sisters.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to my excellent beta, who in addition to providing encouragement and catching typoes, also gave me some advice about spinning with a drop spindle. If you want nice, even yarn, don't do what Ina is doing, you guys.


End file.
